Catherine

The IRS will tell you "three days" but I have never seen it take less than two weeks.

Maybe you can send him to Roni Deutsch?

I'm thinking it's going to help my elderly clients with two rental properties, the profit from which supplements their too-small social security and pensions in this high-tax state, where the taxes on those rental properties each approach $8K, and the mortgage interest another $5 or 6K. I'm thinking it's going to help the woman who carved off a piece of her house to be a separate unit so she and her kids could afford to live there after her husband died. And more.

Let me just toss a wrench into the works. With the state and local taxes capped at $10K, I do NOT see how this new law "favors real estate owners." Unless you are specifically talking about owning rental properties, where the mortgage interest and real estate taxes go on Sch E, not Sch A, and where the taxes are not capped. Around my area, real estate taxes alone (ignoring state income taxes) are *commonly* over $10K. Not having those as a deduction certainly does NOT favor real estate ownership. Ditto in NH; the town real estate taxes tend to be very high, to make up for the lack of income tax receipts since NH has no state income tax on individuals.

bump up the queue

Me too - it looks good. Have not checked it out in detail yet, though.

Eric Greene is terrific.

That was the one! In my Waltham office I had a booklet out; since I moved to Arlington I think that's one of the items still in a box.

Some clients of mine moved to SC and want someone more local to them than all the way out in Massachusetts. Anyone here interested? Nice folks; good clients for something like 15 years. Send me a PM.

Back when the repair regs went into effect, there was a step-by-step booklet I bought for help in filling out the 3115. If I can find it, would you like the link to the lady who produced it?

Yes, security and anti-virus software is the most usual reason for software not installing. I have installed Drake from downloads and from CD's, on the C drive or on partitioned drives, sole station, networked, or network access; never had a problem. As long as the security is off!

They will either get up to speed quickly, or be asked to leave. I don't think Drake has much patience for support staff who cannot support. That said, they could well still be coming up to speed.

The one and ONLY time I had to mail multiple years in one envelope (long story), it worked. But I used a special procedure: I used heavy duty binder clips for each year, to hold that return together. Each year's return had a piece of paper in front AND back, facing out, saying in LARGE type "2007 tax year" (or whatever year it was) Humongous binder clip holding all four, piece of paper front and back, facing out, saying in ginormous type, "FOUR YEARS TAX RETURNS ENCLOSED" They actually processed all four years separately. I never got my binder clips back, lol. (I knew they were lost before I sent the package.)

I h ave one client who gets irregularly spaced bonuses that are processed differently from regular payroll (as if for a separate employee). Those bonuses ALWAYS have insufficient tax withheld. The standard W4 calculations are useless - we have had to base on expected wages, expected bonus with under-withholding, and add the under-withheld amount to the regular wage amount. It's always a nightmare, but it can only be done by saying "$131 per pay period more tax" rather than mucking about with exemptions.

I have used the label printer to print labels rather than envelopes. While my printer does print envelopes, they don't always feed cleanly, so I prefer not to do that. In general, on the (very rare!) occasion someone at Drake does not know how to help, I make an excuse to hang up, and try again. Someone else will answer, and will be able to help. When I have had to have a problem escalated, they promise a call back within 24 hours but have rarely gone more than 12 hours. And they apologize for taking that long.

I still have a scented candle that I bought with S&H Green Stamps in the mid-1990's. Yes, they were still around (limited, but around) then! At least, they were still around in Worcester MA...

How about shoe size and date of last pedicure? Sheesh. And what about those of us who are not certain of their own blood type?!

Oooh! Now we get into multi-variant analysis! Shades of advanced calculus (MIT's much-dreaded "18.075" course of song and legend). Took that monster in 1979; passed with a "D" (a passing grade at MIT) and I have never worked harder to pass a class in my entire life than that one. Even my husband (a genius) took it all by itself as a summer course; I took it along with four other classes while working on weekends. Ugh. I lived - barely! About all I remember at this point is the "Method of Frobenius" - not how to DO it, just the name! Oh; and the heat conduction partial differential. For some utterly bizarre reason, anything to do with thermodynamics always made perfect sense to me. Not so much in other areas. I still think Edsel can get his answer using the brute-force and inelegant iterative method.

It's what calculus was designed to circumvent; elegant equations rather than recurring clunky equations until the solution converges. Anyone who went to engineering school knows the term. Now all we need is a differential equation solution to the SEHI with premium tax credits! Know anyone with an advanced degree in math? @RitaB perhaps?

Very true. However, if Massachusetts' DOR came in and found me storing client data on unencrypted folders, or sending unprotected-by-passwords emails of client documents, they would have my head on a platter. So my drives are encrypted and I use password protection and NO wireless networking (everything is physical connections) and I cross my i's and dot my t's and just to be sure I cross my i's and dot my t's. NOT because it's "safer" but because the state, in its infinite lack of wisdom, has required procedures that make no sense and I do not want to become the poster child for non-compliance. They can go find some obliviot who keeps everything on a laptop with the password "password" for that!

@Edsel - you could still use the calculator link. Pick the simplest employee, poke in numbers until you get a match, and then you'll know if that exemption is in addition to, or not. Then add in married, see if the calculator changes things. A bit iterative and inelegant but it should work, and you should get an answer in 15 minutes. Better than searching for definitions for an hour and then having to do samples to make sure they're right.

Adobe Acrobat can be purchased very inexpensively if you go to ebay and buy a new, registerable, version that is a couple of revisions out of date. I did that some years ago and still use that program on two machines. I have Nuance Power PDF for the third machine. They all do password protection and encryption.

There will still be plenty of people who are too busy or who detest the job enough that they want it done for them. However, if there are fewer clients with Sch A, I can give them a lower price and spend more time teasing out the stock options and bitcoin type transactions.

Accepting returns as of 1/29 but no processing for another couple of weeks. Sure; we'll go with that (like we have a choice). That's actually the date I expected (though on an online poll I picked a slightly earlier one for some bizarre reason).

I got all my client W-2's printed out today but have not answered the phone or really any client emails today. The snow has been blowing sideways all day (I took a video on my camera and need to figure how to put that on facebook), there are drifts, and the winds are really howling! Still have power, hooray. The local emergency mgmt folks did reverse-911 calls last night telling folks to set their house thermostats to 72F (I guess to keep them warm a bit longer if power does go out). It feels decadently warm in much of the house - but not the office, on the north side above the garage. I made a white pizza for dinner and as soon as it cools off enough to cut, we'll see how well it turned out!